Friday, May 9, 2014

Is Anyone Watching Online Ads? Uh….No, and Why Should They?

Just
imagine your company shells out big money to a marketer, to get your ads online
– and you expect them to appear in primo positions, places…..say like on the NY
Times. (Believe it or not, there is a hieraarchy for placement of online video
ads and regular ads). Then, after a time you enlist the services of an “ad
verifier” and lo and behold discover your ads are being placed on porno sites.

This
evidently is what happened to one marketing company called Blue Chip in a
promotional campaign for a company that sells “mom-related products”. (‘The
Great Unwatched’, NY Times, p. BU-Y1, 6).When Blue Chip hired a verification service – the agency vice-president
Sarah VanHeirseel’s jaw dropped.According to the Times’ account:

“Many
of the ads were running in tiny video players, 3” by 2”, on the sites. Some
were auto-playing. But disappointment turned to rage when she read the list of
domain names where the ads were running; it included pornographic websites.”

Wow!
But such is evidently the landscape now as millions of ads pile in to vie for
space in an already crowded venue, and often end up getting the ‘scraps’ so to
speak. Too many adds for placement, too few fine upstanding venues with high
profile consumers. Welcome to the world of online ads which currently gin up a
$2.8 billion business.

Now,
don’t get me wrong. I understand that companies have to find new customers and
make profits if they can, given this is largely a consumer-driven economy. (70
percent of the GDP is driven by consumption).

But
do they really expect me to stop what I am reading, and gaze over to the left
or right to take time to watch a stupid ad video? Hell no! No more than I would
do watching the TV – where nearly everything is put on the DVR list so any
shows with commercials (like Amazing Race) can be sped through at will – unless
wifey wants to look a little longer at one of those Expedia Travel troll
dolls).

The
name of the game, in other words, is ad avoidance, because they are: boring,
mentally insulting and basically distracting from what I want to do.If I had my way then (and advertisers and
marketers should be glad I don’t) I’d ban every last ad or ad video from the
Net.

Indeed,
I mark as a uniquely cursed day when the marketing and ad bastards devised the
sort that come to life if your cursor (or finger on a notebook) barely touches
the hidden ad space. Whereupon all of a sudden a noisomepopupintruder or cartoon seizes the reading space and demands you pay
attention or else….. Well, truth be told when that interference occurs I simply
split for another site. I refuse to waste one nanosecond being forced to watch
an ad until I can get to the article again. (Of course, there are ‘close’
notices on mostsuch ads, but I’ve recently
encountered a few lacking this civility.)

But
how many of these ads really get read, if any?Vindico, an ad management platform company (cited in the Times’ piece)
asserted that 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months
don’t get read. They are deemed “unviewable”. That
is 1.14 billion video ads that don’t get viewed. That’s a lot of money wasted
but maybe they don’t care.

Now,
because of this huge wastage, one has to expect something will change to get
more ka-ching than no-thing. As it turns out, the Interactive Advertising
Bureau – which manages such duties. The IAB has announced that from the end of
this June – get this – a video ad will be considered a viewable impression if 50 percent of the player
containing it can be seen for at least two seconds.

According
to the Times (ibid.):

“In
other words, if you visit a website and scroll down and the top half of the
video player is in your view for two seconds – ka-ching. That counts as an
impression, even if you didn’t watch the ad.”

In
effect, this new IAB standard sets a baseline for negotiations between buyers
and sellers and is an improvement over the current standard which doesn’t
require the ad to be viewed at all.

The
point is that ad makers and their lot will collect something instead of
nothing.A typical rate cited is $10 for
1,000 impressions or one cent per impression.

Jeebus!
If we’d all just sit down and watch more of these things, the ad makers would
earn more money and not have to grovel for “impressions”.

But
don’t look for that to happen at my end.To me ads will remain a nuisance, certainly the type that intrusively
pop up any time and almost in every web space.

2 comments:

It is very interesting. You should have a read if you haven't already. Loosely, it's about the notion that it takes a lot of effort to do brave work, and that people are naturally disinclined to put in that effort if the chances of the good work being used seem slim.It's especially interesting if you read the comments, there appears to be a lot of disenfranchised creatives out there, who appear have given up on producing good work and are just phoning it in. online ads

About Me

Specialized in space physics and solar physics, developed first astronomy curriculum for Caribbean secondary schools, has written thirteen books - the most recent:Fundamentals of Solar Physics. Also: Modern Physics: Notes, Problems and Solutions;:'Beyond Atheism, Beyond God', Astronomy & Astrophysics: Notes, Problems and Solutions', 'Physics Notes for Advanced Level&#39, Mathematical Excursions in Brane Space, Selected Analyses in Solar Flare Plasma Dynamics; and 'A History of Caribbean Secondary School Astronomy'. It details the background to my development and implementation of the first ever astronomy curriculum for secondary schools in the Caribbean.